SCORE: Medal of Honor

[BLUMENKOHL 1,068]

Blume Score: 92%

To understand the world that Medal of Honor and Michael Giacchino burst into, you have to turn the clock back 17 years. You need to unravel 17 years of everything you know, love, and hate and go back to a time where Hans Zimmer hadn’t scored Gladiator yet, Jerry Goldsmith was alive and kicking, and John Williams had just unleashed Star Wars The Phantom Menace on the world. James Horner was a big deal, and the latest cyclical renaissance of film scores that began in the early 90s was still chugging along. To be fair to other time periods though, it’s tough not to have a renaissance when you’ve got the likes of Zimmer, Poledouris, Horner, Williams, Goldsmith, Bernstein, Kamen, Silvestri, and more all at work.

 

So, the world of established film music was pretty damn great. But if you looked hard enough you could start to see its edges. You knew that the old greats weren’t long for the world, and there wasn’t as much fresh talent as you’d like to replace the old guys. Even Zimmer by then had a solid ten years of fame to his name.

 

This was the backdrop against which Michael Giacchino made his first serious scoring debut. Except he didn’t score a film. He scored a video game, a genre which at the time had the musical reputation and gravitas worthy of some toddlers beating on pots and pans in the kitchen while mommy cooks dinner.

 

Now here is the part that you have to really wrap your head around: against this competitive backdrop, at a time when you would ask who are the greatest composers, and you’d hear back answers that few people would dispute, when the concept of video game music was a joke, and when the newest of the best had dozens of scores to their name, Michael Giacchino released his first serious score: Medal of Honor.

 

And people noticed. Not only did they notice, they loved it. No one else had entered the world of musical scores like this. And to this day, I would argue that no other composer has. Of course, eventually someone will, but who knows, we may not be around for that.

 

Medal of Honor is a pure musical distillation of what World War II was to the vast majority of people who lived it: a life and death struggle between good and evil. This is a score for a population who witnessed the last romantic war. Before the cameras showed the world what war really was like, what you hear in Medal of Honor was war in people’s heads.

 

The score is an astounding feat, it is energetic, it is bold, it’s bombastic, it has heart, it has soul, and yet Giacchino infuses the score through clever writing, orchestration, and mixing with a cold grayness that is synonymous with how people think of World War II. The music despite it’s frenetic momentum feels like a cloudy day. Or at least as though the chaos is splattered against a cloudy backdrop. After the disappointingly (though appropriate for picture) reserved and modern interpretation of the horror and tragedy of war that John Williams gave Saving Private Ryan a year earlier, this is what fans of musical scores had been craving out of a World War II score. The maestro, who had at that time quite a reputation for bombast (Schindler’s List was the exception) made music to make you weep, while a nobody writing for a video game no-less managed to deliver World War II music that made you want to enlist. He delivered what people expected John Williams would have and didn’t.

 

Almost immediately the comparisons between Williams and the nobody began. After all, if someone came on the scene with a score like Medal of Honor, surely their trajectory into the future would exceed everything we have known to be good music up to that point in time! Surely!

 

Sadly, we’ve all learned that starting on a high note doesn’t guarantee an equally steep trajectory upwards. Some of us would even say that the trajectory of one’s career doesn’t always point upwards. In the world of science it’s referred to as regression to the mean.

 

Regardless of where you think Michael Giacchino has landed today, though without question he has failed to exceed Williams, Medal of Honor is a score that you must listen to. It’s one of the finest war scores ever written, and 17 years on remains one of the best scores Giacchino has written.

 

Some highlights from the score: “Taking Out the Railgun” a deliciously sneaky string-driven track. “Panzer Attack” if you ever wanted to hear what a Panzer Tank would sound like as music. “Rjuken Sabotage” for one of the best thematic passages Giacchino has ever written (1:36-2:02). “Attack on Fort Schmerzen” for some of Giacchino’s weightier bombastic writing (2:17-end in particular).

 

On that note, this is probably the “heaviest” bombastic blockbuster score we’ve gotten from Giacchino. Everything else feels lighter and pluckier by comparison.

 

Alas, this is a fucking great score, and each track has something memorable to it. So get it and listen to it. If you haven’t listened to it in a while, listen to it again.

[Will 2,215]

Great review @Blumenkohl!

 

I've never really heard this score, but I know I should at some point. 

[Jay 37,271]

It's on Spotify

 

https://open.spotify.com/album/7pYd9qVJOJcmpqYjSUzLgf

 

Nice review, Blume

[Incanus 5,713]

A nice review Blume! And it is a great score although as I am wont of repeating MOH Frontline is even better, a more mature take on the subject while also reaching for something more operatic and ambitious and cinematic.

 

There is very evident love Giacchino has for the music of the film music masters and his idols and role models but I don't it ever becomes too distracting, more of a tip of the hat to composers like Goldsmith and Williams. One of the things the video game format allows a composer to do is to roam a bit more freely and since the timing isn't down to a millisecond trying to catch the action on-screen like with a film score there usually is allowance to dwell on the development of motifs, themes and ideas and give them a rounded character. This means these pieces of music can be less vulnerable to the changes of pace often happening in film but also have the added challenge of having to encompass a single or multiple moods in a succint manner without being too specific to any dramatic beat (unless scoring a cut scene in cinematic style).

 

This can also result very easily in very episodic musical vignette-like scoring where each piece presents a new idea without any relationship between the tracks on the album so that they become illustrations of single mood whether frenetic action, heroism or suspense. While no relation between these tracks is absolutely necessary per se, in programmatic music with a narrative like MOH some kind of musical thread running through it is an asset and Giacchino does from the start follow his role models like Williams and employs themes and motifs like in any film score to bind the whole thing together and give it a coherence.

[Luke Skywalker 1,792]

very nice blume.

[BLUMENKOHL 1,068]

7 hours ago, Incanus said:

A nice review Blume! And it is a great score although as I am wont of repeating MOH Frontline is even better, a more mature take on the subject while also reaching for something more operatic and ambitious and cinematic.

 

 

 

I like Frontline about as much as MoH, I think. A bit harsher on the ears though, a more aggressive score. Underground is good too. Airborne is where things get less long-line thematic and more rhythmic.

 

Secret Weapons is a great one too!

[Koray Savas 2,251]

One of the best scores ever composed!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

You are joking, right?

[A24 4,326]

What do they know, Steef? They are just a bunch of shoot 'em uppers. In that world the album has a certain reputation.

[Luke Skywalker 1,792]

Blume I like how you address the 'next Williams' thing and put it in its 'historical' setting.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

3 hours ago, Alexcremers said:

What do they know, Steef? They are just a bunch of shoot 'em uppers. In that world the album has a certain reputation.

 

But Koray didnt say it was one of the best game scores ever composed, he said scores. So that means he is putting it up their with the really great works. Herrmann's Psycho, Goldsmith's Alien and Chinatown, Williams' Star Wars!

 

Shocking!

[BLUMENKOHL 1,068]

Stefan, your snobbish attitude towards Michael Giacchino has always been rather puzzling given your predilection, perhaps even add-kissery, for David Arnold. 

 

Arnold, as well know, was the Giacchino of the 90s. A promising upstart, writing brilliant pastiche and hailed as the next John Barry who never quite made it to John Barry levels of greatness. 

 

Guess you just have the experience of being burned once. 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

David Arnold however has composed a few outstanding scores. Gia has not. 

 

Also I never thought Arnold sounded particularly like Barry, apart from when he intended too. Apples versus oranges. Try again Blume!

[BLUMENKOHL 1,068]

It's OK Stefanie! We are all allowed our guilty pleasures! I am not judging your taste!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Its not like I haven't tried for years. But Gia just doesn't cut it for me. It's not just his style or voice, it's that he is technically  and compositionally far too limited. And he hasn't improved all that much.

 

If you listen to A Guide For The Married Man and then Images you will hear a musical voice which has matured, evolved.

If you listen to Medal Of Honor and then Star Trek Beyond you'll mostly hear that he's working with bigger budgets.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

 

Blume, i am sure you will remember Jay Chattaway, who wrote many scores for Star Trek, many using never more than two groups of instruments played at once,  often in unison. Incredibly based music, yet somehow perfectly effective.

 

Chattaway could have scored Star Trek Beyond and Paramount would have saved a lot of money, and had a better score

 

Thats how low I rate Gia!

[BLUMENKOHL 1,068]

That's fine, but this score is fucking terrific.

[KK 3,307]

This is a very fine score from my memory. Like for many others, it was what once made me a Gia fan. I should revisit it sometime.

[idril 86]

I LOVE this score and all of Giacchino's Medal of Honor scores were great. I love that your review puts it in context.

To add to the context, I was thinking of Nobuo Uematsu, who I would say had been taking game scoring very seriously already by this time. But perhaps that speaks to Japanese attitudes towards the value of video games? I can't think of another Western composer to do the same until Giacchino.

[Fabulin 3,506]

.

[BLUMENKOHL 1,068]

Yep. You don't get this level of consistency in quality over this many tracks this often.